|
<Home> <The Problem> <Translated Sections> <Timeline> <Museum Tour> <List of Tribes> |
| An international aspect of the Germani | <table of contents> <previous page> <next page> page 2 of 3 |
|
| The Germani, with their meager agricultural means, would have been in constant threat of extinction had they been isolated. Their contact with more developed cultures set them in motion. Yet they were neither mere “borrowers” from alien cultures nor steadfast barbarians that blocked any innovation. Nor can one approve the untenable contemporary view that the Germani formed a distinct high culture that could be compared to the ancient cultures of Rome and Greece. To be sure, the Germani were barbarians who were intractable toward the Romans, but they were still pliable when it came to the culture. Their art, their poetry, their social relationships, their burial rituals, and their religious ideas are suggestive of the Celtic, Roman or eastern nomadic spheres. But one can also find something unique, which can be designated as typically Germanic. What is fascinating about the Germanic tribes is their transition from “fringe culture” to high culture and the mobility and flexibility that allowed them to go from their traditional identity to the benefit of a new identity without shrinking away. Examples of this should include those Germani at the time of Caesar, who simply borrowed the entire Celtic culture. An additional example would be the Vikings a thousand years later in Russia. The Viking chieftains simply married indigenous noble women, spoke Slavic, and, like the other Scandinavians who were along, became indistinguishable from the Russians. Surely the Germani, who were never themselves united, do not seem at all appropriate to serve the 19th and 20th Century racial and nationalistic ideologies which brought them so much discredit. |
||
page 2 of 3 |
||
|
<Home> <The Problem> <Translated Sections> <Timeline> <Museum Tour> <List of Tribes> |